Friday, November 28, 2008
Linguistic Analysis
All of the so-called special and artificially designed logical languages are really no more than ad hoc deviations from ordinary language.
Logic Truths and Language Statements
Concepts, statements, and arguments are just ordinary words and statements combined according to a prior system. In this sense, logic itself is merely ordinary grammar and language. I can't come to know or understand anything without having some kind of idea about it. Hence I can't know anything without naming it and using words to describe and discuss it.
Concepts by themselves are not knowledge. Concepts have to be combined in statements. Words and word combinations by themselves just don't make complete sense. Words have to be put into some kind of statement in a structure first, to make a complete thought or become capable of being true or false. In other words, logic is in a sense just the grammar of thought. And logic is the knowledge tool in the same way that language is.
Both language and logic are required to communicate, achieve, obtain, and have knowledge.
I take my use of language for granted, usually not even thinking about it or having any concern with perfecting my use of it. And I treat logic the same way, which is part of why I'm likely to think of mind tools as artificially contrived instruments of scientists instead of basic natural knowledge tools such as concepts, statements, and arguments.
Concepts, statements, and arguments I also take for granted and hardly ever try to understand or master them.
But logic and language are not the same thing. The English word "house" is different from the German "haus", and "haus" is different from the French "maison". Yet all three have the same core meaning, different as words, but all conveying the same basic idea or concept. So there's some difference between linguistic entities called words, and the ideas I intend to convey using those words.
And there's a similar difference between statements and truths:
These two statements have different grammatical sructures, but say mostly the same common or basic thing. Both statements are designed to express the same basic truth. Given multiple languages, there are a large number of ways to express this truth using statements with different syntactic structures. But unlike grammar and linguistics, logic is about the inferential structures of intended truth, not directly about statements and their linguistic and grammatical structures.
So there are thought rules and active thinking, logical entities and the language used to communicate thoughts about logical entities.
1-3 (8-10)
Concepts by themselves are not knowledge. Concepts have to be combined in statements. Words and word combinations by themselves just don't make complete sense. Words have to be put into some kind of statement in a structure first, to make a complete thought or become capable of being true or false. In other words, logic is in a sense just the grammar of thought. And logic is the knowledge tool in the same way that language is.
Both language and logic are required to communicate, achieve, obtain, and have knowledge.
I take my use of language for granted, usually not even thinking about it or having any concern with perfecting my use of it. And I treat logic the same way, which is part of why I'm likely to think of mind tools as artificially contrived instruments of scientists instead of basic natural knowledge tools such as concepts, statements, and arguments.
Concepts, statements, and arguments I also take for granted and hardly ever try to understand or master them.
But logic and language are not the same thing. The English word "house" is different from the German "haus", and "haus" is different from the French "maison". Yet all three have the same core meaning, different as words, but all conveying the same basic idea or concept. So there's some difference between linguistic entities called words, and the ideas I intend to convey using those words.
And there's a similar difference between statements and truths:
- He laid the book on the table.
- Er hat das Buch auf dem Tiseh gelegt.
These two statements have different grammatical sructures, but say mostly the same common or basic thing. Both statements are designed to express the same basic truth. Given multiple languages, there are a large number of ways to express this truth using statements with different syntactic structures. But unlike grammar and linguistics, logic is about the inferential structures of intended truth, not directly about statements and their linguistic and grammatical structures.
So there are thought rules and active thinking, logical entities and the language used to communicate thoughts about logical entities.
1-3 (8-10)
Mind Tool Inventory 1
I never can know anything without already having some idea or notion of what I'm dealing with. An idea, concept, term, or notion is a prior logical tool that must be used to know anything.
Whatever the exact definition of ideas may be, I still can't know anything without having some idea of what the thing in question is. Otherwise I could not distinguish the thing in question from nothing at all. Any alternative ends up being a rose of a different name, as well as love's labor lost.
Now while ideas, such as "eternity", "logic", "higher than", "evanescent", "fortitude", or "parallelogram", are knowledge tools I can't do without, they're not the only ones. I could multiply my ideas indefinitely, but they still would not be knowledge in the usual sense of the word, although they do assume knowledge about themselves and general reality.
The Idea of the Statement
Suppose I have the ideas of "dull" and "logic". I still have not arrived at the truth that logic is dull, not until I've combined my ideas in a way that will make them capable of being true or false. The notion of parallelogram in itself is neither true or false. Nor is the notion of "logic", "dull", or "angiosperm". And even in combination, ideas do not necessarily become true or false.
Suppose someone were to ask me, "Blue people whom Caesar trusted---is this true or false?" the question could not be answered. But if someone were to ask me, "Caesar trusted blue people," that would present to me something I could believe to be true or false.
So to find truth or knowledge I must also combine my concepts into statements., because only through statements can ideas be true or false and be enough to call knowledge. Just as I can't know anything about anything unless I formulate a statement about it, saying whether the thing in question is this or that, or what is true about it. The tool I use to come to know whether or not something is this or that is the statement. Truth and knowledge are obtained only by using statements.
Another tool is argument. Suppose I have the ideas of logic and "a waste of time", and suppose I've temporarily formulated the statement "Logic is a waste of time". Do I know this for a fact? Am I certain? After all, a statement is susceptible to either truth or falsity. But which is it? Is it true or is it false that logic is a waste of time? The ideas and the statement aren't enough to answer the question. I have to look for some evidence of the truth or falsity of the statement. And to advance evidence is to construct an argument in support or refutation of it.
So I might say "I talked to my friends and they say logic is a waste of time. Therefore I believe it's true." Or I might say, "Any subject that deals with thoughts and words and not with laboratory-testable facts is a waste of time."
There are many arguments that logic is a waste of time, but they're still arguments.
And as arguments, they assume that logic is crucially important. Argument has to be used in the daily process of trying to know and understand things.
(1-2)
Whatever the exact definition of ideas may be, I still can't know anything without having some idea of what the thing in question is. Otherwise I could not distinguish the thing in question from nothing at all. Any alternative ends up being a rose of a different name, as well as love's labor lost.
Now while ideas, such as "eternity", "logic", "higher than", "evanescent", "fortitude", or "parallelogram", are knowledge tools I can't do without, they're not the only ones. I could multiply my ideas indefinitely, but they still would not be knowledge in the usual sense of the word, although they do assume knowledge about themselves and general reality.
The Idea of the Statement
Suppose I have the ideas of "dull" and "logic". I still have not arrived at the truth that logic is dull, not until I've combined my ideas in a way that will make them capable of being true or false. The notion of parallelogram in itself is neither true or false. Nor is the notion of "logic", "dull", or "angiosperm". And even in combination, ideas do not necessarily become true or false.
Suppose someone were to ask me, "Blue people whom Caesar trusted---is this true or false?" the question could not be answered. But if someone were to ask me, "Caesar trusted blue people," that would present to me something I could believe to be true or false.
So to find truth or knowledge I must also combine my concepts into statements., because only through statements can ideas be true or false and be enough to call knowledge. Just as I can't know anything about anything unless I formulate a statement about it, saying whether the thing in question is this or that, or what is true about it. The tool I use to come to know whether or not something is this or that is the statement. Truth and knowledge are obtained only by using statements.
Another tool is argument. Suppose I have the ideas of logic and "a waste of time", and suppose I've temporarily formulated the statement "Logic is a waste of time". Do I know this for a fact? Am I certain? After all, a statement is susceptible to either truth or falsity. But which is it? Is it true or is it false that logic is a waste of time? The ideas and the statement aren't enough to answer the question. I have to look for some evidence of the truth or falsity of the statement. And to advance evidence is to construct an argument in support or refutation of it.
So I might say "I talked to my friends and they say logic is a waste of time. Therefore I believe it's true." Or I might say, "Any subject that deals with thoughts and words and not with laboratory-testable facts is a waste of time."
There are many arguments that logic is a waste of time, but they're still arguments.
And as arguments, they assume that logic is crucially important. Argument has to be used in the daily process of trying to know and understand things.
(1-2)
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Logic, Naturally
We live in a common everyday world of persons and things, beings that exist with their own unique natures and traits, that act and are acted on, and whose being and behavior exist and are intelligible through causes. Our logical tools, such as definitions, syllogisms, universal concepts, affirmative and negative statements, inductions, relations of oppositions, and so on, are adapted to cognizing a world of everyday experience.
Some may say that this common world of everyday experience has been discredited and displaced as a result of the world view of modern science, particularly physics. And a logic adapted to a knowledge of everyday experience must now give way to a logic adapted to getting to know the esoteric world of modern physical science.
But as long as one remains within the context of the elaborate mathematical constructions and theories of modern physics, a logic adapted to the intentional function of enabling us to come to know things in terms of what they are essentially, through their causes and in their acts of existing, appears to be out of place and irrelevant, since mathematical theories of physics seem unconcerned with things such as causes, essences, substances, acts of existing, and so on.
But that does not imply that our world or our logic for understanding our world is discredited or displaced. Scientists cannot avoid being human, immersed in an everyday world of living and nonliving things, friends and enemies, birth and death, joy and sorrow, change and permenance, intelligibility and mystery. And as an inhabitant of this world of common experience, a scientist cannot avoid thinking and reasoning and trying to understand as a human being. So a scientist will want to know what this is, whether that is, and why something else is, a concern with essences, existences, and causes. But such concerns are served only by a human or humanistic logic.
Concepts, statements, and arguments are necessary instruments that we naturally use in trying to understand the world.
Some may say that this common world of everyday experience has been discredited and displaced as a result of the world view of modern science, particularly physics. And a logic adapted to a knowledge of everyday experience must now give way to a logic adapted to getting to know the esoteric world of modern physical science.
But as long as one remains within the context of the elaborate mathematical constructions and theories of modern physics, a logic adapted to the intentional function of enabling us to come to know things in terms of what they are essentially, through their causes and in their acts of existing, appears to be out of place and irrelevant, since mathematical theories of physics seem unconcerned with things such as causes, essences, substances, acts of existing, and so on.
But that does not imply that our world or our logic for understanding our world is discredited or displaced. Scientists cannot avoid being human, immersed in an everyday world of living and nonliving things, friends and enemies, birth and death, joy and sorrow, change and permenance, intelligibility and mystery. And as an inhabitant of this world of common experience, a scientist cannot avoid thinking and reasoning and trying to understand as a human being. So a scientist will want to know what this is, whether that is, and why something else is, a concern with essences, existences, and causes. But such concerns are served only by a human or humanistic logic.
Concepts, statements, and arguments are necessary instruments that we naturally use in trying to understand the world.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
The Sitting Ducks of Political Correctness
Criminals are bound to pay close attention to those too politically correct to suspect a protected-status person, group, situation, or event.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Fun With Self-Exemption
A self-referentially inconsistent statement undercuts itself. It denies or cannot explain something that's required for that statement itself to make sense and be true.
Also, a self-referentially inconsistent statement is its own subject matter. Hence, it refers to itself. But a self-referentially inconsistent statement can't explain or justify itself.
I'm so glad no one can read or communicate a statement in English!
Also, a self-referentially inconsistent statement is its own subject matter. Hence, it refers to itself. But a self-referentially inconsistent statement can't explain or justify itself.
I'm so glad no one can read or communicate a statement in English!